June 2017 - Chairman's Report

16 Jun 2017, 11:29 AM

Strategic issues

Mega Consultation

Council trialled the concept of a ‘Mega Consultation’ combining consultation on the Annual Plan, the Charging Policy, and the Marine Pathways Management Plan into one process this year. This was to try and avoid potential ‘consultation fatigue’ for the community if we had followed the normal process of consulting on each one separately.

At this stage, there are pluses and minuses. The pluses are all around the level of community engagement which has been great. Whereas the minuses have been around the complexity of the issues being consulted on and significant adverse feedback from members of the community.

At some stage council will be considering whether the ‘Mega Consultation’ concept will be repeated or not.

Economic Development

At the time of writing we are eagerly awaiting the MartinJenkins section 17a review of our delivery of economic development services to the region. In the meantime statistics have come out indicating that Northland is the second highest performing region on the economic development front in the country for the last quarter.

This is a massive improvement on recent history and is a reflection of the superb work being carried out by Northland Inc. and central government agencies operating in the region. It will, however, take more than one quarter to lift Northland off the bottom of the pile in terms of many of the poor social statistics that have bedevilled the region for decades.